The Chaldean Account of Genesis: Containing the Description of the Creation, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the Destruction of Sodom, the Times of the Patriarchs, and Nimrod; Babylonian Fables, and Legends of the Gods; From the Cuneiform Inscriptions

By George Smith

The book of Genesis not only outlines the creation of the universe, God's relationship with Man and the story of the ancient Hebrew people. It's also the creation story for religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. By all accounts, the book of Genesis appears to have covered everything. 

But, what if it didn't? Wh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Left of Brain Books
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781396319419

George Smith

George Smith is a published author and playwright employed in the field of community education.

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PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.

It is now five years since the present volume was first laid before the public by Mr. George Smith, just before setting out on his last ill-fated expedition to the East. It naturally awakened extreme interest and curiosity. The earlier chapters of Genesis no longer stood alone. Parallel accounts had been discovered by the author among the clay records of ancient Babylonia, which far exceeded in antiquity the venerable histories of the Bible. All those who had a theory to support, or a tradition to overthrow, turned eagerly to the newly-discovered documents, which possessed an equal interest for the students of history, of religion, and of language.

The five years that have elapsed since the publication of The Chaldean Account of Genesis have been five years of active work and progress among Assyrian scholars. The impulse given to Assyrian research by Mr. Smith has survived his death; numberless new tablets and fragments of tablets have been brought to Europe from Assyria and Babylonia; fresh students of the inscriptions have risen up in this country and on the continent, more especially in Germany; and the scientific spirit which has been introduced into the study of the Assyrian language has immeasurably increased our knowledge of it. Thanks to the labours of men like Oppert, Lenormant and Guyard in France, or of Schrader, Delitzsch, Haupt and Hommel in Germany, texts which were obscure and doubtful at the time of Mr. Smith’s death have now become almost as clear as a page of the more difficult portions of the Old Testament. The Assyrian student, moreover, has an advantage which the Hebrew student has not; he possesses dictionaries and vocabularies compiled by the Assyro-Babylonians themselves, and these frequently throw light on a word which otherwise would be a hapax legomenon.

The more backward condition of our knowledge of Assyrian, however, was not the only difficulty against which Mr. Smith had to contend. He was pressed for time when writing the present volume, which had to be finished before his departure for the East. The class of texts, also, which he had brought to light was a new class hitherto unknown, or almost unknown, to the Assyrian decipherer. He had to break fresh ground in dealing with them. Their style differed considerably from that of the texts previously studied; they had a vocabulary of their own, allusions of their own, and even, it may be added, a grammar of their own. If the texts had been complete the difficulty perhaps would not have been so great; but it was enormously increased by their mutilated condition. The skill and success with which Mr. Smith struggled against all these difficulties show more plainly than ever what a loss Assyrian research has sustained in him.

Nevertheless, even the genius of Mr. Smith could not do more than give a general idea of the contents of the fragments, and not always even this. A comparison of the translations contained in the present edition with those contained in the preceding ones will show to what an extent the details of translation have had to be modified and changed, sometimes with important consequences. Thus the corrected translation of the fragments relating to the Tower of Babel will remove the doubts raised by Mr. Smith’s translation as to his correctness in associating them with that event; thus, too, the corrected rendering of a passage in the Izdubar Epic will show that the practice of erecting a Bethel or sacred stone was familiar to the early Babylonians. In some instances Mr. Smith has misconceived the true character of a whole text. What he believed to be a record of the Fall, for instance, is really, as M. Oppert first pointed out, a hymn to the Creator.

On the other hand, the fresh materials that have been acquired by the British Museum during the last five years, or a closer examination of the treasures it already possessed, have enabled us to add to the number of cuneiform texts which illustrate the earlier portions of Genesis. Mr. Rassam, for example, has brought home a fragment of the Deluge tablet, which not only helps us to fill up some of the lacunæ in the text, but is also important in another way. It is written, not in Assyrian, but in Babylonian cuneiform characters, and comes, not from an Assyrian, but from a Babylonian library. But it agrees exactly with the corresponding parts of the Assyrian editions of the story, and thus furnishes us with a proof of the trustworthiness of the Assyrian copies of the Old Babylonian texts. The text, again, which relates to the destruction of a country by a rain of fire, though long contained in the British Museum Collection, was first noticed by myself as being apparently the Babylonian version of the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Numerous alterations and insertions have had to be made in the text which accompanies the translations. The latter necessarily occupied the main part of Mr. Smith’s attention; he had neither time nor inclination to enter very elaborately into the questions raised by them, or the illustrations they might receive from elsewhere. In fact, any adequate treatment of the great Izdubar Epic, for instance, demanded a special acquaintance with the method and results of Comparative Philology, as well as a more intimate knowledge of its history and character than was possible at the time when Mr. Smith wrote.

A large proportion of the cuneiform texts from which the translations contained in the present volume are made has not yet been published. I have, however, gone carefully over them all with the exception of a small portion of the Izdubar Epic, and endeavoured to bring the translations up to the level of our present knowledge of the Assyrian language. I am indebted to the ready kindness and accurate eye of Mr. Pinches for copies of almost all the unpublished portions of the Izdubar legends. In these he has corrected several faulty readings, more especially that of the name of the pilot of Xisuthrus, which ought to be Nes-Hea, the lion of Hea. Mr. Pinches assures me that the name of the deity composing the second part of the name is invariably written with the numeral 40, the symbol of the god Hea, except once when the scribe has miswritten 50, the symbol of Bel, and he has pointed out to me a passage in a bilingual tablet where the name is explained in Assyrian by Nes-Hea. Unfortunately, the texts given on reference pages cannot be found, and here therefore I have been obliged to leave Mr. Smith’s translations unaltered.

The reader, however, must remember that no translations of these mutilated tablets can be more than approximately correct. Even if the meaning of all the words were well known, and they were divided from one another (which is not the case), the broken condition of so many of the inscriptions would make a good deal of the translation more or less conjectural. This must be doubly the case where the signification of the words is either unknown or only half known. I have always endeavoured to indicate a doubtful word or passage by a query; but there must be instances in which the meaning that I believe ought to be assigned to particular words will be corrected by the further progress of discovery. This is even more true of what may be termed the commentary accompanying the translations. Surprises are constantly in store for the Assyrian decipherer, and a tiny fragment may suddenly throw a new light on a question he had supposed to be settled. In fact, in Assyriology, as in all other branches of science, there is no finality; we cannot be more than approximately exact at any given time, and every month enables us to introduce fresh corrections and improvements into our work.

A fresh illustration of the fact has been afforded even while the present volume has been passing through the press. Mr. Pinches has come across two fragments (one marked S 669, the other unnumbered) which belong to two separate copies or editions of a very interesting work. This is nothing less than a list of the ancient epics and legends of Chaldea, along with the names of their reputed authors, many of whom, however, are probably as mythical as the famous Rishis of India. The list shows how numerous these early poems were, and how few of them, comparatively, we possess at present. Both fragments belong to the same part of the list, and we are therefore ignorant of many of the ancient compositions it must originally have contained. Some of the works mentioned receive their names from the heroes celebrated in them, others are named from their opening lines. A distinction is drawn between those that belonged to the Accadian period, and were written by Accadian poets in the Accadian language, and those that were of Semitic Babylonian origin. The interest of the list is enhanced by the great antiquity of the poems it records, none of them being later than about 2000 B.C. Here is a translation of the text as restored from a comparison of the two fragments according to the copies I have made of them:—

Obverse.

1. Ca ————

2. This is the work (literally from the mouth) of ————

3. "a khus ba a ri ————

4. the god ———— tsu bu nu" ———— [Accadian.]

5. This is the work of Nupatuv ————

6. The mighty lady, the winged one, Nigirra, or Bel ————

7. He restored Til-enni, or Life.

8. May Merodach the great lord firmly defend. [Semitic.]

9. This is the work of Basa-Gula, the scribe ————

10. The king of the sphere in their front, or the lord ——— [Acc.]

11. This is the work of En-me-duga ————

12. ———— head, thy lustre ———— [Acc.]

13. This is the work of Elum ————

14. ———— ci bat ————

Reverse.

1. ————————

2. (This is the work of ————) ragas, the scribe, the man (of a non-existent tablet).

3. ———— the gods [Acc.]. This is the work of ————

4. ———— the bull of Bit-Esir (the firmament), or The great fortress of the royal crown ———— [Acc.]

5. This is the work of Cus-dib the son of ————

6. ———— nun-na [Acc.]. This is the work of Elum-ban-cudur, the son of Khumetis, the scribe, the man of (a non-existent) tablet.

7. ———— "the paggalti which over heaven are placed" [Sem.].

8. (This) is the work of Gimil-Gula, the son of Il-khigal the scribe, the man of a non-existent tablet.

9. The day of calling, the long day at the dawning of light (?) [Acc.]. This is the work of Ekur (Esiru), the son of Nunna-tur.

10. The hero Izdubar. This is the work of Sin-lici-unnini the scribe ————

11. The hero Etana. This is the work of Nis-Sin the scribe ———

12. The hero the Fox. This is the work of Kak-Merodach the son of Eri-Turnunna, the man of a non-existent tablet.

13. (The hero) ’Sidu. This is the work of ’Sidu-labiri the prince, the man of a non-existent tablet.

14. ———— a tu gab [Acc.]. This is the work of Lig-Dimir the scribe, the man (of a non-existent tablet).

What is meant by the phrase the man of a non-existent tablet, I do not know. Possibly it signifies that the autograph of the author no longer existed at the time the list was drawn up. The Bull of the firmament was a legend which was probably connected with the second month of the year, originally, it would seem, the first, which like the zodiacal sign after which it was named, was called the month of the directing bull.

Future excavations will doubtless bring to light some of the poems mentioned in the list and not previously known. I have myself lately come across two fragments (S 802 and S 316) which belong to legends hitherto unknown, but they are too short to be worth translating. What curious revelations, however, we may yet expect from the cuneiform records may be judged from a small and well-preserved tablet recently brought to England, which contains a catalogue of the gardens belonging to Merodach-Baladan, the contemporary of Hezekiah, and grouped according to the districts in which they were situated. Merodach-Baladan must have been fond of horticulture, since the catalogue contains the names of no less than sixty-seven seed-gardens, besides six other pleasure-grounds. Many of them were named from the localities in whose neighbourhood they were, but others bore such significant titles as the forest of reeds, the small enclosure, or the garden of the waters of the city. As the tablet was copied by a scribe named Merodach-sum-iddin, probably in the time of Nebuchadnezzar or his successors, it is evident that some of the contents of the library of Babylon escaped the destruction brought upon that city by Sennacherib in B.C. 692.

I may add that since the greater part of this edition has been in type, I have found myself able to explain the name of the hero which in default of the true transcription has been provisionally read Izdubar. The name is composed of three ideographs, the first of which is the determinative prefix of wood, while the two latter are rendered saptu saplitu, the lower lip, in Semitic Assyrian. Now M. Lenormant has shown that Izdubar was originally the Accadian Fire-god, and Mr. Boscawen has pointed out that the fire-stick was once used in Babylonia; it is therefore evident that the three ideographs composing the name represent the lower piece of wood, with a lip or groove in it, which formed the most important part of the primitive fire-machine. I believe the Accadian pronunciation of the name will turn out to be Kibirra.

A. H. Sayce.

May 21st, 1880.

CHAPTER I.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE GENESIS LEGENDS.

Cosmogony of Berosus. — Discovery of Cuneiform Inscriptions. — Historical texts. — Babylonian origin of Assyrian literature. — Mythological tablets. — Discovery of Deluge texts. — Mutilated condition of tablets. — Lecture on Deluge tablets. — Daily Telegraph offer. — Expedition to Assyria. — Fragments of Creation tablets. — Solar Myth. — Second journey to Assyria. — Tower of Babel. — Clay records. — List of texts. — Legend of Oannes. — List of early legends and their authors.

It has long been known from the fragments of the Chaldean historian, Berosus, preserved in the works of various later writers, that the Babylonians were acquainted with traditions referring to the Creation, the period before the Flood, the Deluge, and other matters of which we read in the book of Genesis.

Berosus, however, who recorded these events, is stated by Eusebius and Tatian to have been a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and to have lived into the reign of Antiochus Soter. His date lies, therefore, between B.C. 330 and 260. As this was three hundred years after the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, the great antiquity of these traditions could not be proved with certainty, much less their independence of the accounts which we have in Genesis.

On the discovery and decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, Oriental scholars hoped that copies of the Babylonian histories and traditions would one day be found, and that earlier and more satisfactory evidence as to these primitive histories than had previously been accessible, would thus be gained.

In the mound of Kouyunjik, opposite the town of Mosul, Mr. Layard discovered part of the Royal Assyrian library, and further collections, also forming part of this library, have been subsequently found by Mr. H. Rassam, Mr. Loftus, and Mr. George Smith. Sir Henry Rawlinson, who made the preliminary examination of Mr. Layard’s treasures, and was the first to recognize their value, estimated the number of fragments brought from this Library at over twenty thousand.

The attention of decipherers was in the first instance drawn to the later historical inscriptions, particularly to those of the Assyrian kings contemporary with the Hebrew monarchy; and in this department of research a very large number of texts of great importance rewarded the toil of Assyrian scholars. Inscriptions of Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonidus, and numerous other ancient sovereigns, bearing directly on the Bible, and throwing new light upon parts of ancient history previously obscure, for a long time occupied almost exclusively the attention of students, and overshadowed any work in other divisions of Assyrian literature.

Although it was known that Assyria borrowed its civilization and written characters from Babylonia, yet, as the Assyrian nation was throughout the greater part of its independent existence hostile to the southern and older kingdom, it could not be guessed beforehand that the peculiar national traditions of Babylonia would have been transported to Assyria.

Under these circumstances, for some years after the cuneiform inscriptions were first deciphered, nothing was looked for or discovered bearing upon the events described in Genesis; but, as new texts were brought into notice, it became evident that the Assyrians borrowed their literature largely from Babylonian sources, and it appeared likely that search among the fragments of Assyrian inscriptions would yield traces at least of some of these ancient Babylonian legends.

Attention was early drawn to this fact by Sir Henry Rawlinson, who pointed out several coincidences between the geography of Babylonia and the account of Eden in Genesis, and suggested the great probability that the accounts in Genesis had a Babylonian origin.

While preparing the fourth volume of Cuneiform Inscriptions for the trustees of the British Museum, Mr. George Smith noticed references to the Creation in a tablet numbered K 63 in the Museum collection, as well as allusions in other tablets to similar legends; he therefore searched through a series of tablets he had previously classed as Mythological, in order to find, if possible, some of these legends. This series of mythological tablets was one of six into which he had divided the Museum collection of cuneiform inscriptions for convenience of working. By placing all the tablets and fragments of the same class together, he had been able to complete several texts, to find easily any subject required, and to get, whenever it was needed, a general idea of the contents of the collection.

The mythological division contained all the tablets which related to Assyrian mythology, and all the legends in which the gods took a leading part, together with prayers and similar subjects.

A steady search among these fragments soon brought to light half of a curious tablet which had evidently contained originally six columns of text; two of these (the third and fourth) were still nearly perfect; two others (the second and fifth) were imperfect, about half being lost, while the remaining columns (the first and sixth) were entirely gone. A statement in the third column that the ship had rested on the mountain of Nizir, followed by an account of the sending forth of a dove, and its finding no resting place and returning, convinced Mr. Smith that he had discovered a portion at least of the Chaldean account of the Deluge. He then proceeded to read through the document, and found it was in the form of a speech from the hero of the Deluge to a person whose name might be transcribed as Izdubar. The same name had already been read on the fragment of another tablet numbered K 231, which turned out to belong to the same series of tablets as the newly-found account of the Deluge. Mr. Smith was thus encouraged to make a search for other portions of the series.

The search was a long and heavy work, for there were thousands of fragments to be examined, and these were so small, and contained so little of the text, that it was extremely difficult to ascertain their meaning. The search, however, proved successful. A fragment of another copy of the Deluge was found containing a second account of the sending forth of the birds. Several other portions of the same tablet were gradually collected and fitted one after another into their places until the greater part of the second column was filled up. Portions of a third copy were next discovered, which, when joined together, completed a considerable part of the first and sixth columns. Mr. Smith now translated the text he had so laboriously pieced together, and published his discovery to the world at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Archæology, December 3rd, 1872. By this time he had made out that the series of Izdubar legends, as we may term them, contained twelve tablets or books. of this series the tablet describing the Deluge was the eleventh and K 231 the sixth.

The interest excited by Mr. Smith’s discovery was naturally very great. Immediately after the meeting of the Society of Biblical Archæology, Mr. E. Arnold, in the name of the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph, asked the fortunate discoverer to reopen, at their cost, the excavations in Assyria in the hope of finding the missing portions of the story of the Deluge. The trustees of the British Museum granted Mr. Smith leave of absence for the purpose, and he accordingly started for the ruins of Nineveh, and there engaged in researches, the history of which is related in his work entitled Assyrian Discoveries. Hardly had he begun his excavations on the site of the palace of Assur-bani-pal at Kouyunjik, when he came across a new fragment of the Chaldean account of the Deluge belonging to the first column of the tablet, containing the command to build and fill the ark, and nearly filling up the most considerable blank in the story. Some other fragments, found afterwards, still further completed this tablet, which was already the most perfect one in the Izdubar series. The trench in which the fragment in